Читать книгу Woman's Cry - Vanessa Martir - Страница 13

9

I yawned with exhaustion. Reliving my past had worn me out. I got up from my futon and went to take a shower. I let the hot water run over my face. When I lowered my head to wet my hair, I saw that I was still bleeding. Salty tears rolled into my mouth as I remembered the miscarriage I’d had two days earlier. I realized that I’d been able to avoid Fabian thus far but knew that my time was running out. I was going to have to face him eventually but still couldn’t stand the sight of his face. I had a class in an hour and a half but couldn’t fathom having to face reality just yet. I decided to skip it and take a long, hot bath. I ran the bath, threw in some bath salts and soaked my worries away. I tried to clear my mind but failed. Thoughts of Fabian and my disillusionment wreaked havoc on my soul.

All my life I had dreamed of attending Harvard University. When I fell in love with Fabian that all changed. I didn’t believe our relationship would survive the distance so I was overjoyed when I was accepted to Columbia University. Admittedly, I was nonetheless getting a topnotch education that would open doors for me in the future but I always wondered what life would have been like had I stayed in Cambridge and followed my lifelong aspiration. Instead, I had opted to follow my heart and here I was sulking in a tub, recovering from a miscarriage and the damage Fabian had inflicted on my body but my emotional scars ran far deeper than any of the superficial wounds.

I inhaled deeply hoping that the juniper aroma of the bath salts would serve to cleanse my spirit. My efforts were once again futile. Despite my attempts, my mind continued to wander back to the past.

I resentfully recalled the many times I had compromised myself and my beliefs for the sake of my love for an undeserving man. I couldn’t count how many times he had played me, often right in front of my face. He’d even brought a girl to our home claiming she was an old friend. I befriended her, smoked Ls with her and talked to her, only to find out months later that she was actually one of his many lovers. Each and every time I discovered an infidelity, I vowed to leave him but each and every time, I took him back.

I became so insecure and distraught that I convinced myself that if I shared in his passion for other women, it would be easier to deal with, that he wouldn’t then have to go do it behind my back. So I proposed a threesome. Naturally he jumped at the invitation. I remembered clearly how revolted I felt the first time I saw him fuck another woman, so much so that in the middle it I had to run to the bathroom to vomit. I realized then and there that the way he fucked me was no different from the way he fucked all the other women he’d been with. For the longest time, I held on to the illusion that only I could spark such zeal and tenderness in him but that night, watching him kiss and caress that female, I saw that I had only been fooling myself.

The problem was that once I did it, I couldn’t go back. Fabian demanded threesomes regularly. I was so asfixiada, so entregada that I obliged. I numbed myself with drugs and alcohol and did what he wanted, when he wanted. I sucked his dick while he ate an unfamiliar pussy. I performed felatio on a stranger while he fucked me from behind. Later, once the euphoria of the drugs had worn off, I would cry in the bathroom, running the shower so that he wouldn’t hear my pitiful howls.

I often wondered how it was I was able to attend school fulltime and actually maintain an impressive GPA but, come what may, I did. Somehow I would zone out my pain and heartache and concentrate on the work at hand. I felt sometimes like school was my escape, the one place where I could free my soul of the manacles that was my obsession with Fabian. Despite how vulnerable and insecure I felt, the one thing I depended on was my drive and dedication to my schooling and academic future. I always promised myself that I’d never let anything get in the way of my education. That was my one consolation - that I hadn’t compromised my studies for anything or anyone.

I was only two months away from receiving my bachelor’s degree. I vowed silently to myself that I would graduate on time, even if it killed me.